The Knight

by Steven James

  He wasn’t quick to answer. “They are what they are.” I heard deep remorse in his voice. Then he took a deep breath. “Anyway, I’ll call Jake and Cheyenne; fill ’em in. Don’t forget, we meet at HQ at one o’clock. I know how much you love briefings, and this one’s extra special. Jake’s going to run down the psychological profile of the—”

  “Please don’t say UNSUB.”

  My comment brought a small but welcome smile. “Killer. So I’ll see you there?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Pat?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  I realized that, given the choice between sitting through a briefing led by Jake Vanderveld and swimming through a pond full of leeches, I’d be looking for my bathing suit. But I didn’t mention that. It didn’t seem like the polite thing to say.

  “OK, I’ll see you at one. That should give me enough time. There’s something I want to look into.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The newspaper articles pinned to the wall at the ranch house all concerned Richard Devin Basque. Since John obviously knows about Basque, I want to find out if Basque knows about John.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I’m going to have a little chat with my old friend.”

  67

  Ten minutes after leaving the hospital, I was in my office in the federal building. I turned on my computer’s video chat camera, phoned Ralph, and told him that I needed to do a video conference with Basque. As soon as I’d explained why, he said, “I’ll take care of it. I’m about ten minutes from the jail. I’ll get things rolling; call you back in twenty.”

  He called me back in twelve.

  “It’s good to go,” he said. “I didn’t mention the subject matter, though. I figured you could bring that up.”

  “Good. What about Basque’s lawyer?”

  “He said he doesn’t have anything to hide; that he doesn’t want her there. He already signed a waiver.”

  Basque was so addicted to control that I wasn’t surprised he didn’t want Ms. Eldridge-Gorman sitting next to him, telling him what to say.

  “It’s a power trip for him,” I said to Ralph. “Just knowing that I’m asking for his time probably makes him feel important.”

  “Is that profiling I’m hearing from you, Pat?”

  “That’s not profiling. It’s called induction.”

  “Sounds like profiling to me.”

  “It’s not profiling.”

  “Pat the Profiler. That’s gonna be your new nickname. Wait till I send out the memo.”

  “Could we just focus on the case here?”

  Then, through the phone, I heard the sound of a door opening. “Wait,” Ralph said. “I gotta go. They’re ready.”

  “I wasn’t profiling,” I said, but he’d already hung up.

  Anticipating that I might want to take notes during my conversation with Basque, I positioned a notepad next to my keyboard, directed the camera on my face, and then clicked “record” so I could keep a digital record of our conversation.

  By the time I was done getting ready, I heard my computer beep. A gray jail cell wall appeared on the monitor.

  Ralph’s head filled the screen. Then the image swung to the left as he centered the computer’s camera on an empty chair. He looked into the camera again. “Almost got it, Pat the Profiler.”

  “Could you tilt your head to the side?” I said. “I’m getting an awful lot of glare on this end.”

  “Ha. Very funny. Laugh all you want.” His face appeared again. He slid his hand across his head. “It drives Brineesha crazy.”

  “Just buy me some sunglasses.”

  The image of Ralph’s face was grainy, and because of the delay between the audio and video, I guessed they were using someone’s older, slower laptop. Then I heard the rattle of leg irons and Ralph said, “Here he comes.”

  There was a moment of blurry movement as Ralph moved back, then Basque situated himself on the chair and faced the camera.

  68

  Today, Basque wore an orange prison jumpsuit and not the hand-tailored clothes he’d worn at the trial, and for some reason that brought me a small degree of satisfaction. The door clanged shut as Ralph left.

  “Hello, Richard,” I said.

  “Agent Bowers.” Even though he was handcuffed, he looked as confident and at ease as ever. “I’d like to thank you again for saving my life. I wouldn’t be here today if you hadn’t responded so quickly.”

  My natural response to a comment like that would have been to say, “You’re welcome,” but I held back and simply said, “Yes.”

  “Did they find out how Celeste’s father was able to load the gun before it was brought into the courtroom?”

  “They’re looking into it.”

  “I’m sure they are.” He paused, folded his handcuffed hands on his lap. “Does this chat concern the recent string of murders in Denver that I’ve been hearing so much about?”

  “It does.” After the attempt on his life I should have guessed he’d be following the news. “I think you might be able to help us find the killer.” I stopped for a moment and evaluated whether or not to say it. Went ahead: “He reminds me of you, Richard.”

  Basque was silent. Finally he nodded slightly. “So, I’m guessing it isn’t motives you’re interested in. What are we hoping to find out here today?”

  “He knows about you. We found newspaper clippings of your crimes. He collected them.”

  Basque straightened up. “Clippings?”

  “Yes. I’m wondering if he ever contacted you.”

  Like so many serial killers, Basque had reached celebrity status among a certain aberrant segment of society. From my pretrial briefing with Assistant State’s Attorney Vandez, I knew that thousands of people had written to Basque over the past thirteen years. Last I’d heard, nine women had asked him to marry them when he was released.

  I figured I’d give Basque one small clue to see if it helped jog his memory. “This killer, he likes Renaissance literature.”

  I’ve only met a few people in my life with a memory as sharp as Basque’s, and now it looked like he was mentally sorting through all of those thousands of letters he’d received in order to identify the man I was referring to. At last, a look of recognition crossed his face. “Giovanni.”

  That’s Boccaccio’s first name, the Italian form of John.

  “Tell me what you know,” I said.

  “Well for starters, I don’t know who he is. Giovanni’s almost certainly not his real name. I never wrote him back.” Basque was as consummate a liar as he was a killer, and even though he sounded like he was telling the truth I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. He must have noticed my skepticism. “You can confirm it with the warden,” he said. “Giovanni wrote to me six times, I never replied.”

  I would contact the warden as soon as I could, but for now I wanted to find out as many details as possible from Basque himself.

  “What did he write to you about?”

  Basque wet his lips, stared directly into the camera, and said, “You.”

  69

  My heartbeat seemed to stop for a split second, and when it picked up again it was faster than usual. “What did you say?”

  “Giovanni wrote to me about an FBI agent he was recruiting to play a crucial part in his story. Someone he was planning to bury alive at the climax. Someone he admired.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not enough. It could be any number of people.” I could see the gears turning in his mind. It appeared there was something he wasn’t telling me. “What else?”

  He tapped a finger slowly against his leg. “I’ll help you if you do something for me.”

  “I’m not here to cut deals.”

  “Hear me out. It’s not a deal like you think. It’s a favor.”

  I was tempted to end the call immediately, but then remembered that nothing I’d done so far had slowed down John—or Giovanni or whatever his name was. He a
lways seemed to be one step ahead, just like Basque had been thirteen years ago in the months leading up to the slaughterhouse. In the months so many women died.

  Cold, whispering lips.

  Basque’s victims.

  And now, Giovanni’s.

  So many innocent people, calling to me from their graves.

  Basque stared at me from the cell in Chicago, waiting for my reply.

  At last I said, “What’s the favor?”

  “When you return to the stand tomorrow and Priscilla asks you about what happened in the slaughterhouse . . .” He paused.

  I’d been trying not to think about the trial, and I didn’t like being reminded that I’d be there in less than twenty-four hours.

  “Go on.”

  “Don’t tell the truth,” Basque said.

  His words stunned me. “What?” I stared at the grainy picture on my computer screen and tried to decipher Basque’s expression. Couldn’t.

  “When she asks you whether or not you assaulted me, don’t tell the truth.”

  “I won’t lie on the stand.”

  Why is he asking you to do this?

  “You’ve considered it, haven’t you?” Basque said. “I think you have. I’m just asking you to do what you want to do, what your gut tells you to do.”

  Cheyenne’s words about following gut instincts immediately came to mind, especially since Basque’s comments struck uncomfortably close to home. “If that’s your only condition then this conversation is over—”

  “He’s coming for you, Patrick.” Basque leaned forward and his voice seemed to carry a note of genuine concern. “He’s playing with you. Be careful. He’s got a twist waiting for you at the end that you’d never expect.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Good-bye, Richard.”

  “I’ll be praying for you. Remember, Exodus 1:15–21. Remem-ber—”

  I ended the call. I wasn’t in the mood for Basque’s games. I wasn’t in the mood for any of this.

  As I was saving the video and uploading it onto the task force’s online case files, I felt a wave of anger.

  Then confusion.

  Then something else. Something deeper and more primal—a desire for revenge, for a rough and final justice to be meted out against Giovanni and Basque. And against all who would mock the dying or take innocent life.

  And with those feelings, I sensed myself slipping, tumbling toward something I did not want to become. I remembered a time a few months ago when Tessa had asked me if I was like them, like the people I hunt, and I’d had to admit to myself that there’s only a thin line that separates me from them. A single act. A single choice.

  Remember who you are, Pat.

  Remember.

  I stared at my office wall: my diplomas, my awards.

  You’re Special Agent Patrick Bowers with the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . . the man who caught Richard Devin Basque . . . criminologist, investigator, author . . .

  My mind tried to dictate my resume, but the words in my head were cut off abruptly when my eyes landed on the spine of Christie’s diary resting on my bookshelf.

  And I remembered the most important part of who I am: You are Tessa Bernice Ellis’s stepfather.

  I crossed the room and gazed at the worn, leather spine of the diary—it wasn’t one of those small diaries with pages the size of note cards but was the same size as a hardback novel.

  Christie was the one who’d first gotten me interested in mysticism and philosophy, and in the last two years I’d read everything I could get my hands on by Guyon, de Fenelon, Merton, and a dozen others. I’d placed Christie’s diary between The Way of Perfection by St. Teresa of Avila and Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, two of my favorites.

  I ran my finger along the spine.

  The wedding picture of me and Christie sat on the shelf just below the diary. We’d gotten married at a small chapel in Central Park and then stepped outside to have this picture taken. And now, as I looked at her smiling face, I felt the same strange mixture of thankfulness and loss I always feel when I see her.

  Christie had chosen Tessa to be her maid of honor. That’s how close they were. That’s how much they meant to each other.

  I took the diary from the shelf.

  And I left to give it to my stepdaughter.

  Unit #14

  Safe-Lock Self-Storage

  5532 Dayton Street

  Denver, Colorado

  Giovanni dropped six rats into the aquarium that contained his three remaining Western Diamondback rattlesnakes.

  The rats tried to climb the glass.

  But the snakes closed in.

  Over the next fifteen minutes he let the snakes feed while he extracted the bufotenin from the skin and parotid glands of the ten toads he’d killed, dissected, and pinned out on the board in front of him.

  After he’d removed the psychedelic drugs from the toads, he consulted a toxicology textbook to determine how much poison he would need for a lethal dose and found that he had more than enough bufotoxin to kill six people, let alone two.

  Reading the description of the symptoms was very informative: hallucinations, vomiting, seizures, paralysis, and then ventricular fibrillation. As one book put it:

  Often the hallucinations involve the sensation of bugs crawling across the victim’s skin or out of the bodily orifices. Frequently, those experiencing these symptoms will scratch furiously at their skin or attempt to scrub, slice or burn the bugs away.

  So, it looked like the next two victims would die just as dramatically as Simona and Pasquino did in Emilia’s story, the seventh tale told on day four.

  Given the delivery method he’d chosen, Giovanni couldn’t be certain if his victims would fatally poison themselves tonight or in the morning, but he was relatively certain that both of them would be dead before noon tomorrow.

  Based on their habits, they would be away from home this afternoon. He could place the poison then. And if they changed their pattern, he would alter his plan. Maybe slip over later tonight while they were asleep. Either way, the story would play out just as it was supposed to.

  The tragic squeaking and scratching of the last dying rat caught his attention. He watched it until it stopped quivering, just like he’d watched his grandmother stop twitching so many years before.

  Finally, the rat stared wide-eyed and unblinking at the world, just like Grandma Nadine had done.

  Just like all the people over the years in the different tales he’d told.

  The snake opened its jaws and began to swallow its meal.

  Giovanni laid the two syringes full of bufotoxin in a narrow metal case, snapped it shut, and slipped it into his duffel bag.

  Then he left the storage facility and, since he had a few arrangements to make before the last four stories began, drove to his place of employment where no one knew, no one had any idea, who he really was.

  And where, in the greatest irony of all, he was trusted implicitly with people’s lives every day.

  70

  Tessa was showered, dressed, and sitting at my parents’ kitchen table waiting for me when I arrived at their house with the diary.

  She was sipping a glass of chilled orange juice and had a half-eaten grapefruit in front of her, and although I expected her to ask me where I’d been or complain that I’d dragged her out of bed and made her change in the car, all she said was, “So, um . . . do you have it?”

  I couldn’t think of anything touching or profound to say, so I simply handed Christie’s diary to her and watched her reaction.

  She accepted it quietly, stared at it. Turned it over in her hands.

  Christie had used her diary partly as a scrapbook, pasting snippets of letters, notes, and postcards inside, all of which made the book fat and lumpy and left the binding straining at the lock. But it gave the diary character, and by the look on Tessa’s face, it seemed to appeal to her inquisitive nature.

  After a few moments when she didn’t say any
thing, I asked her, “Where’s Martha?”

  “At church.” Tessa still hadn’t looked up from the diary.

  “She left you alone?”

  “She asked if I wanted her to stay home, but I told her I’d be safe with those two undercover cops in the car across the street watching the house.”

  “How did you—?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease.”

  OK, so I would need to have a little talk with those two officers.

  “So, you fly out today again?” Tessa was looking at the diary, but speaking to me.

  “I need to leave for the airport at about 2:30. I’m hoping to be back tomorrow evening.”

  “And then we leave for DC pretty much after that.” She didn’t state it as a question.

  It was possible that my testimony in Chicago would affect the timing of our trip to DC, but I decided I could deal with all that later. “We’re scheduled to leave on Wednesday. Yes.” She didn’t reply. I tapped her shoulder gently. “All right, well, fill me in when you’re done reading it, OK?”

  “I will.”

  Then, leaving the glass of OJ and the remains of the grapefruit behind, she took the diary upstairs to the bedroom my parents let her use when I’m out of town.

  Despite her overwhelming curiosity, Tessa stared at the diary for a long time before opening it.

  When Patrick had first told her about it, she’d been angry, angry, so angry that he’d kept it from her, but then when he told her that her mom hadn’t wanted him to give it to her until her eighteenth birthday, she stopped being angry and became something else.

  Curious, yes.

  Maybe a little afraid.

  But why? What was she afraid of?

  She stared at it, ran her fingers across the weathered cover.

  She kept this from you. Your mom kept it from you.

  She didn’t want you to know about it until you were eighteen.

  But why not?

  Tessa slipped the key into the lock. Her heart began to run like a rabbit through her chest as she turned the key, clicked open the clasp. Flipped to the first entry.

  November 2

  Dear Diary,

  I’m not really sure why I’m doing this, writing to you, I mean, starting a diary. I guess I’m hoping you’ll be a place for me to just be myself, the real me, the person no one ever really seems to notice. I guess it’s good to have a place like that. I don’t know. It’s hard to be honest with people sometimes, maybe I can at least be honest with you.